Ive bought a lot less games since many of the bigger and even some of the smaller publishers have started locking things at release. Spent way less on new AAA releases in steam in 2013 than I had in years prior. If they think preventing someone from buying a game at 35$ means that person will just give them 50-60$ instead they are mistaken. Just like the old used game argument. Companies believe every time this happens that lose that money. Its just not true in my case. They have lost my money since these changes.

This retroactive region locking will screw over some Brazilian and russian traders big time.
And maybe some SEA traders but the prices are usually not that far off from the US prices.

I'll just quote myself from another thread about this issue;
"Unless it's a game i really want to play and support the dev, like i did with Banished. Everything else can fuck off; i got plenty to play already.
edit: Games being cheaper in Russia made me way more willing to randomly buy a load of crap during the sales but if they are gonna introduce the locks everywhere i'm gonna hold on to my money and find another hobby to spend it on."

Personally I dislike region restrictions. It should be 1 price everywhere and every place can play it.

But since they do region restriction they should at least make the keys reflect what region they are restricted to. For example, Russian keys should be RUS-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX, North America restricted keys should be NMA-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX. Keys that work everywhere no matter where you are should be ROW-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

I also do believe that changing the region restriction after selling a bunch of keys should not be allowed.

I'm also a very cheap person. I pretty much never buy new games. When I am buying something for myself, I wait till its at least 75% off and under 5 bucks. Usually that means I have to wait a year or two before I get a game.

Region restriction. AKA Region lock, regional restriction.

A regional lockout (or region coding) is a class of digital rights management preventing the use of a certain product or service, such as multimedia or a hardware device, outside of a certain region or territory. A regional lockout may be enforced through physical means, through technological means such as detecting the user's IP address or using an identifying code, or through unintentional means introduced by devices only supporting certain regional technologies (such as video formats, i.e. NTSC and PAL).

TL;DR:

IT'S FUCKING DUMB.

I think that if prices would be egual in the whole world the problem wouln't even exist.

Doesn't really affect me much. When I trade I always look for RoW copies. Yes, they are more expensive than Russian or BR copies, but at least I can have a peace of mind that I won't have problems down the road. Although I don't like the fact that they don't write wether a gift is region restricted or not. I feel that is unfair. They should at least change the names on the gift to say ROW, RU/CIS etc..

Also, some games, like Rockstar games are not even available in my region. Only way I can buy them is from other sites like GMG. They too now started making these games unavailable to us. If this continues, only way I can play such games is by pirating them.

It's utter bullshit. Why should someone be punished because they don't live in _____ country? Makes no sense.

Lots of traders will QQ a lot since they live off their VAT on trading games for TeamFortress/DotA/CSGO Keys etc. Dont even need to read all this topic to tell you that ( too tired atm )

I really can't find out why is there a punishment for literally "Circumvent the region restriction to get a lower price for a product"... Basically because the whole damn world does the same. Macro economics actually WORKS THAT WAY: You need sth, you go looking for it wherever it's price is better, take it to other place where people pay more that it costed you, and profit. It's like "We are doing this. You can't because we say so. Tough luck"

tl;dr, I just don't understand, why steam can't just restrict gift purchasing on all of those games. Russians will buy a copy for themselves, can't trade, where is the problem?

Us people coming to Russia on a steam shopping tours? :D

I think region restrictions are a load of bull. Why can't prices be the same throughout the world, and what's with some games only being sold in certain regions. If it's on the internet, it should be equally accessible by all. Putting restrictions on a gift copy after it's been purchased is unacceptable.

cant happen in the EU...valve is not allowed to block/lock or ban your account for buying/trading games that you bought in "other" countries"
as a citizen of the european union you are allowed to buy your goods whereever you want, no matter what.
the restictions and especially the EULA/ToS about regional restrictions are illegal.
this is a farce and a shame.

this can only happen in the US or CIS States since the law is different there

Prices are high in the U.S.? Come to Europe. We have to pay the U.S. price in Euros! Almost nothing is converted into an acceptable price! I only buy 1 euro games, because almost everything is cheaper in the USA, and even cheaper in Russia. Basically you have better prices than us!

The most worrying is that now even GOG will allow regional pricings. This might move on from Steam to other platforms, since you can also gift games on GOG too, so publishers will be facing the same problem. With this muxh shit being done about it, why not just get rid of the gifting/trading system in general?

I think it's an archaic practice. It has no place in a digital distribution. Publishers should stop looking at the money they think they are losing and focus on the money they are making. How many people wouldn't have bought the game at all if they couldn't get it for a lower price? It's also not thinking globally. At this point many people have friends from all over the world. If someone wants to gift someone a game from another region, they should be able to. Why should a person's generosity be stifled by a publisher's greed?

Region restriction also fosters ill feelings within the community towards the publishers. It paints the publishers in a light of greed and tyranny. Restricting consumers can have a huge backlash. Take the game Spore for instance. It placed huge restrictions on gamers and as a result they saw record breaking piracy. In my opinion this was retaliation from the gaming community. Publishers who practice tyrannical methods in order to "stop loss" often find themselves losing more sales. They are trying to control things in the market that are beyond control. If publishers would focus more on making themselves "friends" of the community and not resorting to knee jerk iron fist tactics, I would think they'd find improved sales.

I live in US, what is region restrictions?